Tom Perkins, the co-founder of the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, was a towering figure in the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship. I had the distinct privilege of learning directly from him. Perkins' influence on my journey Tom's influence on my professional journey is profound and enduring. The lessons I gleaned from our interactions and observations of his approach have provided a blueprint that has shaped my thinking and guided my decisions for more than four decades. These insights have been instrumental in fostering innovation and in developing young, groundbreaking companies to address unmet needs in healthcare. Over the course of my career, I have been involved in commercializing more than 20 medical products in 13 diverse medical domains. How we met Before working with Tom, I spent 13 years at American Hospital Supply Corporation (AHSC, now Baxter). As a turnaround specialist, I gained invaluable and extensive experience in both product management and operations across 13 U.S. and international divisions. In my final five years, I served as President of AHSC's Heyer-Schulte Subsidiary, a company specializing in Class III medical implants. Under my leadership, Heyer-Schulte achieved an NEBT return of 42%. Then Tom recruited me from AHSC to transform Kleiner Perkins’ first medtech investment, Novacor, from a research organization into a fully operational company. At the time, Novacor, a Class III medical device company, was pioneering the development of a left-ventricular heart pump. This opportunity opened doors to what would become for me more than four decades of work with development-stage companies in medical technology, connected health, and more recently, in biotherapeutics. From...
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